About

I started taking pictures with an Olympus OM10 on my 16th birthday. I cherished that camera and took it everywhere, much to the delight of my parents who paid the continual processing costs! Photographing everything from fuming buses in stations, council road-sweeps, rubbish blowing down the street and even supermarket aisles when out shopping with ‘Mother’, I was particularly drawn to the old scratched floor tiles. Even today, you’ll find most of my street photo’s include a nice ‘chunk’ of high contrast brick paving, concrete, tarmac or grotty wall.
Over many years I’ve had a continual ‘love hate’ relationship with film, growing tired of the lengthy processing and scanning rigmarole. After moving to digital with a Leica M8, I would ultimately miss the beautiful tactile quality of shooting film, so would sell up and again buy a film Leica (2 CL’s, an M5, M6 and an M2)..

After repeating this several times, Fuji had by then released the ‘X’ cameras and it didn’t take long to realise that the old digital Leica’s had been well and truly upstaged. For a while I was perfectly settled into the ways of the Fuji X-E1 with the XF35mm f/1.4 lens. The Fuji XF glass was easily on a par with the Leica lenses and a whole lot cheaper.

However it was inevitable that the siren call of the Leica M couldn’t be ignored forever and I returned to the fold with a Leica M9 and Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 LTM lens.

I continued to shoot 35mm film with a Leica M2 and Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 LTM lens and Medium Format with a Mamiya C33 TLR Medium Format and Mamiya Sekor 135mm lens. The negatives then processed in my own Darkroom converted from an old Chicken Shed and scanned using an Epson V500.

Recently I realised a long running ambition and released my first eBook – Street Photography – A Personal Point of View, quickly followed by several more.

Even more recently, I moved away from expensive or ‘purpose made’ street cameras and now persue a simpler (and cheaper) way of shooting with a Ricoh WG-5 Point & Shoot Compact camera.

Now, after an eternity of searching, I believe I have finally found my ideal Street Photography camera in the Fuji X100T.

My style of photography is ‘if I like it, shoot it’, photographing primarily for my own enjoyment and to share the results and experiences with others. If people like what I do, there’s no better reward.

Photographers past and present that have given me inspiration include William Eggleston, Eugene Atget, William Klein, Diane Arbus and the charismatic and insightful Zack Arias.

As well as photography, I’m also a keen guitar player and am on a continual quest to unravel the mysteries of ‘the blues’.

There’s also a YouTube Channel where I upload videos I’ve made relating to photography as well as vehicle maintenance videos and my recent move to a life afloat on a Narrowboat.

Since moving onto a canal boat in May 2017, I’ve put Street Photography aside.

Over the past 5 years I have documented my journey around the UK’s canals and inland waterways, culminating in my own TV series on Amazon Prime, called “Travels by Narrowboat”.